Outrageous RW lie of the day: U of California system doesn't require US history for students

[alp227]

Jeff Schauer delivers a thundering response to this dishonest word salad by the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz "How California's Colleges Indoctrinate Students" published in Saturday's Wall Street Journal (I didn't include a link because a link leads to a paywall; Google the title for the full article). Here's the most outlandish claim of all:

None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered. In several English departments one can graduate without taking a course in Shakespeare. In many political science departments majors need not take a course in American politics.

Gee, that is such a crazy statement that it might even get some regular WSJ readers (whose ideology isn't exactly like ours) scratching their heads. I left a comment on Schauer's blog that linked to UC Berkeley's graduation requirements, which note: "The American History and Institutions (AH&I) requirements are based on the principle that a U.S. resident graduated from an American university should have an understanding of the history and governmental institutions of the United States." This requirement may be fulfilled either thru taking AP US History in high school or a general US history course in junior college, or taking one of Berkeley's classes about specific eras in US history. Furthermore, the Institutions requirement does include a course "Introduction to American Politics". Wow! But according to people like Berkowitz, Berkeley is recruiting new Occupiers and Communist Revolutionaries who are CLUELESS about America!

Also, in response to Berkowitz citing studies showing the majority of professors in UC departments are Democrats:

Typically, Berkowitz cites the imbalance between Democrats and Republicans amongst faculty, to suggest that leftists have a hammerlock on higher education. But perhaps it’s only natural that fewer conservatives gravitate towards academia when their political standard-bearers, if Rick Santorum is anything to go by, have nothing but contempt for the suggestion that higher education has anything to offer all citizens, and see universities as ‘elitist’ institutions. Right-wingers are busy dismantling California’s public higher education sphere, so it doesn’t make sense that they’d be flocking in any great numbers towards an institution whose very purpose they purport to despise (I’ll admit, I have a morbid curiosity to know who the lone Republican in Berkeley’s history department is). And it’s not academia that’s been moving left. The Republican Party used to be a respectable party that believed in things like protecting the environment, examining cause and effect in foreign policy, and at least some measure of communitarian responsibility. These days it’s become a radical party run by economic and often religious fundamentalists, so I’d say that it’s no wonder that people who have chosen to dedicate their lives to solving problems and answering questions of communal social interest want nothing to do with a party that has developed a disturbing tendency to spurn knowledge and attack its thoughtful acquisition as somehow elitist.

And I wonder why those conservatives who are screaming and yelling about "liberal bias" in colleges go silent when it comes to economics departments:

(Berkowitz) also suggests that “those ideas that depart from the progressive agenda” are excluded. Again he is wrong. For one thing, every UC campus has an Economics department, which would more properly be called a Western Capitalism department given that no shrift is given to economic practises or modes of life outside a western tradition. Furthermore, I read Burke and Carlisle along with Mill and Marx; Collingwood and Nietzsche as well as Foucault and Fanon; Niall Ferguson alongside Hobsbawm. Berkowitz supplies no data to support his contention about exclusive curriculums, and I suspect that this is because there is none. He’s riding a right-wing hobby horse straight towards a cluster of giants who will turn out to be windmills.

[mulsh]

1. This is a good example of how the Hoover Institute is merely a daycare facility for

unemployable right wing shills.

[tishaLA]

4. Joan Walsh correctly calls it "wingnut welfare" nt

[enlightenment]

2. Okay - I teach college history.

Here's what you quoted:

"The American History and Institutions (AH&I) requirements are based on the principle that a U.S. resident graduated from an American university should have an understanding of the history and governmental institutions of the United States." This requirement may be fulfilled either thru taking AP US History in high school or a general US history course in junior college, or taking one of Berkeley's classes about specific eras in US history. Furthermore, the Institutions requirement does include a course "Introduction to American Politics".

1. AP US history is a high school class - therefore, while it may fulfill a requirement of the overall program, it is not part of Berkeley's general ed requirements.

2. A 'general US history course in junior college' - same as above. This means the class may be taken at the community college level. It can be fulfilled outside of Berkeley's general ed requirements.

3. "Introduction to American Politics" is not a history class. It is a Political Science class. Not a history class.

The actual requirements of the US system are spelled out here:
http://ge.ucdavis.edu/local_resources/docs/GE_American_cultures_5-27-08.pdf

The gobbledygoop translates to:

Two 3-credit hour courses (six credit hours). One that covers "nature of citizenship, government and social relations in the United States" and the other covers "issues such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, and religion within the United States".

That translates to (using the course catalog):
The first course: a sociology class. a communications class. a history class. a political science class. a linguistics class. a psychology class. (and so on - it doesn't just mean 'a history class')

The second course: an anthropology class. a sociology class. a history class . . . actually, it looks like pretty much every academic discipline has a course that would fulfill the diversity requirement.

So - technically, the criticism is correct. A student going through the UC system could graduate without taking a single history class at the institution from which they graduate.

[alp227]

6. 'History and institutions' mean separate categories. Not combined.

And I don't have the time to read every UC campus graduation requirements, but I'm assuming for now that the UCB reqs I linked to are in line with the general UC standards. In fact, I attend a California State University right now and did take one class about California politics as part of my general eds. In high school, I passed both the AP US History and US Government exams. Even if Berkowitz may not be a reliable source for either of us, I thank you for your clarification, as I think that only select UC campuses require studying American institutions.

My university has similar American Institutions requirements (see the reqs for my major). They range widely from general history or humanities courses to ethnic ones about African- and Asian-Americans.

[kiva]

3. It's a valid criticism,

and one that can be made of many college programs.

Student who score sufficiently well on the AP history programs are able to skip survey courses in college/university - and most do not take upper level courses, so they are in essence not taking history (American or other) in college.

In my state students can take political science as a substitute for the specific requirement, and skip history.

And yes, there are many students and graduates who are "clueless" about American (and World) history.

[Igel]

5. I seem to not see the lie.

UC has some funny terminology.

Once when I was on a campus committee the undergrads were agitating for a "world cultures" requirement. It confused us, but it seemed not unreasonable.

The proposal that came out of it was to include various of the culture classes in the cluster requirements. There were survey classes in the departments that taught French, Italian, Slavic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, Semitic languages, and numerous other departments. There were ethnomusicology courses, music courses proper, history courses, literature and art courses.

The proposal provoked outrage and we were called insensitive racists. We went back to being confused.

"World cultures" was the word used. But the requirement as they explained it was to require students to take a course in US Latino, African-American, US Pacific Islander, or Native American culture. (I think there was another. European groups didn't count. They had to think twice about Arab-American "culture," but Jewish certainly didn't count.) The courses pretty much had to be taught by an ethnic studies program. We were grateful that the academic year was ending so there wasn't time to work on it. We had trouble suppressing the urge to tell them that "world" did not have the meaning that they thought it did.

Apparently they got something like this.